This is the Philips Xenium, which has a smartcavity(tm)into which you place a normal, or re-chargeable AAA battery. When you charge the phone, you also charge the battery. It does mean your phone has a rather unsightly bulge at one end, but if you’re the kind of person who values productivity over aesthetics, then this is the device for you.

They also do a wide range of stand alone mobile chargers, but unless you’re in the jungle or a desert (where you’ll probably struggle to get a signal anyway) i can’t quite see the point of em. When you live in the global village you’re very rarely that far away from a power socket, and if you don’t have a charger on you, someone else is bound to. Emerging markets you say? Perhaps, but in countries where a pack of triple AAA batteries cost the equivalent of two months wages (Zimbabwe), talking on your phone a bit longer will probably come lower on the list than feeding your children.

Spice, an Indian network operator, had some interesting and amusing phones on display. First up is a phone designed for visually impaired people. It has no screen, features braille keys and speaks out the numbers as they are pressed. Sadly there’s no text-to-speech to read SMS messages or anything like that. It is very much a pure phone-phone. Still, I think it’s a very nice idea. Well done Spice!

Next up is a gamepad attachment for a phone called the “Game King”. It looks and feels as tacky as the it sounds and kind of reminds me of the PolyStation 3!

They also had some cute freebies at the stand including a very intricate phone pouch. Something for the missus perhaps…

‘Orpheus, how will i know i’m the one?’ Tricky question Neo, there are a lot of teeny devices out there this week, what makes you so swell? Mp3 player,
1.2 mp camera, fm radio, expandable memory to 2gb and did i mention i’m very small? That’s lovely Neo, now take the red pill and go save the world from rampaging machines etc.

I spent some time on the NTT DoCoMo stand today. It’s always fun to drool over the amazing devices and services they have over in Japan. Though it’s then depressing to realise that we currently miss out on much of that stuff here in Europe. (Why I can’t I do contactless payments with my phone yet, dammit!) Here are some photos of things that caught my attention…

There I was minding my own business on the Nokia Siemens Networks stand looking a DVB-H demo when I spotted this:

This couldn’t possibly be a prototype N96 from when they hadn’t decided what the final model number would be. No, definitely not. The only logical explanation is that it’s a Nokia device from the future when they’ve exhausted all 2 digit numbers from N01 to N99 that has been sent back in time through a random wormhole and, purely by coincidence, happens to look exactly like an N96. Yes, that’s got to be it.